For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for July 01, 2010

Two days in a car with children of those ages?

It can be done.

My ever-so-brave parents drove from Halifax, NS, Canada to Austin, Texas to start a sabbatical with me (age 4) and my sister (age 2). At the time, I remember being so amazed–what were the chances that there was a pool every single place we stopped? Parents can be pretty crafty…two to three hours in the pool and we’d crash for the night! ;-)

KHandcock, hehe yes a pool is a lifesaver!

I will really date myself and echo KHandcock about parents always seeking a Motel with a pool. However in the 50s, these were less common so things had to be planned. During my Military Dad’s transfers and vacations, my sibling and I would be put in the back of the station wagon on blankets laid over the luggage at O’Dark of the clock and allowed to sleep until breakfast [No Car seats]. Then the trip would end for the day at about 3-4PM for a swim. Amazing how far one could go like this!

We looked at stuff during the day and then drove at night. My spouse and I took turns sleeping.

Every trip we took was educational. Any thing new is educational. You learn about the people and beliefs, I saw a gun shop/liquor store. I knew more about the people in that area.

Spoken like a true parent!

What memories. Now as age advances, my spouse and I seek other comforts. Usually a plush mattress and a steakhouse within walking distance. Now that’s roughing it.

Reminds of when I was a kid – when I was 5 and my brother was 2, my family moved across the country and drove for 5 days straight! We also had a dog and a cat in the back of the truck (in a camper shell). We even got snowed in twice, and the truck broke down another day – I imagine it was quite the adventure for my parents! They said I spent much of the drive singing the same handful of songs I learned at school, and my brother pointed out every McDonald’s sign he saw….

i remember route 66 from calif to (detour) manhattan, kansas. enter a town limits: reduce speed to 35 mph. exit other side, “Resume Speed”. heh. really. no speed limit signs most of the trip. oh: and Burma-Shave limerick signs. remember those? if you do, yer ancient as me….. ;]

JOHN! You know that you and Elly MUST have a survival kit, just in case whenever you both and the kids might be lost or got stuck on the road or wherever you all are at, use that survival kit for safety and rescue. Sheesh! Also, John, you said that everything in the car packed full and then, no room for survivial kit to be put. Take it and put it in the passenger seat where Elly will sit on. Another sheeeshhhh! sighhhhh! John, USE YOUR HEAD! DUUUHHH!

Got you all beat. Eight kids and 8 dogs (7 were puppies) in a canopy in the back of a pickup (multi-colored from being rebuilt) pulling an overloaded small trailer. We traveled like this several summers, though mom did make dad paint the pickup all one color before we went on a two week trip out of state.

I wonder what Elly’s idea of a survival kit is for dealing with being trapped in a car for hours with two battling siblings. Valium? If my brother and I fought on a trip (and we did), we’d get smacked by dad. That usually ended it (for awhile).

Two fun filled days featuring fear and frenzy. Survival kit not optional.

What would we do without Paul Jones wise and comforting words?

Two days in a car with young children, and no Game Boys or DVD players…I don’t know how we got along.

Good or bad, these trips are what memories are made of…

Adventures are seldom fun while they are happening.

We put a foam mattress in back of station wagon. Started about 6pm after eating at home, one potty stop down the road, and then the boys slept. A bit wrinkled when we stopped for breakfast, but another hour or so we were at grandparents! Only safety policy was boys slept with heads forward in case we were rear-ended. This was before interstates and North OK to South MS was a long drive!

We traveled with 4 kids, 2 adults in a station wagon with all our camping gear…tent, lantern, coleman stove, food, clothes were inside on the folded down center seat. Often we had a canoe and 6plus fly rods on the roof.

1 kid sat on the center jump seat, three more in the back. Mom had seatbelts installed in the car in the early 1960s. Kids never got to sit up front.

If we were going for more than a weekend, we had this bizarre double hitch cargo trailer with 1 sprung wheel which we called “yumpin yiminy”. It was kind of like towing a wheelbarrow…

When we camped, mom and dad slept in the back of the car and we kids slept in the tent. It was real luxury when the blow-up air matresses stayed up all night.

We also had the very first model external aluminum frame umbrella tent. People would stop by our campsite just to look at the tent.

My Dad kept me occupied on a cross-country trip by making me The Navigator. I learned how to read a road map (but not how to fold one) and called out every crossroad along the way and its distance from the previous one. As an only child I had no one to fight with or play with, but I didn’t get bored. It was a great adventure back in the summer of 1948.

Usually a “Don’t make me pull this car over and come back there!” from my dad was more than enough to keep my younger sister and me from fighting and killing each other on those long vacation trips when I was a kid!

But I really enjoyed reading back then so a good book (like “Gone With The Wind”, for instance) usually kept me pretty-well occupied for hours … and luckily, I was never bothered by motion-sickness trying to read in a moving vehicle!

My Dad would yell “CUT IT OUT” once, to my older brothers and I. If that didn’t work a large arm would start swiping into the back seat. It did not discriminate. Whoever got smacked got smacked. The innocent and guilty alike! He didn’t have to yell very often.

My dumbass ex step dad drove us from London, Ontario to norhwest of Calgary Alberta. We made (as I recall) 2 stops overnight.

It was hell.

In this world of tears and sin Your head grows bald but not your chin! Burmashave!

We collected licence plates - that is, you “collected” one if you saw it on a car. The rarest, of course, were Alaska, Yukon, and Hawaii. One of those was actually shaped like a polar bear! And without realizing it that’s how I learned mottoes of various states: The blunt, uncompromising, “Live free or die” - I used to wonder what kind of people New Hampshirers were. This was all before the superhighways, and I was in charge of the map so I could give my father directions. At the time he would say that if not for my help, we would never have got there, and I believed him. Then I got older and realized it was a joke. Then I got even older, and now I’m not so sure - maybe it wasn’t a joke after all.

Then there was that lunch stop when I bought a harmonica – poor Mom and Dad!!

Good Memories all y’all and fun. My parents just made the regular trek from Chicago ‘burbs to Devil’s Lake WI. My worst memories are of the outhouses. My best are of lovely sandstone cliffs and “devil’s walking sticks” - something like miniature bamboo.

Well, once last summer, we were in the car for 20 hours straight! A tennager, a tween, and a kindergartener. I hold the record of all my friends.